


Two idiots at Homoville, N69, TX

by lithiumAlchemist



Series: Two Idiots At Homoville, N69, TX [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: HTML/CSS heavy - not kindle or download friendly, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Substance Abuse/Alluded Sexual Coercion, Nonbinary Jake English, Oversharing, Slow Burn Speedrun, Straight Edge Dirk Strider, This is legitimately just a r/relationships post, Trans Characters, Trans Dirk Strider, and they were roomates, comedy… or is it?, dirk strider rants on reddit, silly quickfic healthy amounts of suspension of disbelief are encouraged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lithiumAlchemist/pseuds/lithiumAlchemist
Summary: In a moment of desperation, Dirk goes on r/relationships. Things get oversharey real quick. He types as follows:"I [23M] cannot understand my [24M?] roommate. He is the most bizarre man to ever set foot on earth and I’m afraid I’m losing him."or, and They Were Roommates.
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Series: Two Idiots At Homoville, N69, TX [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2018417
Comments: 22
Kudos: 285





	Two idiots at Homoville, N69, TX

11.1K↑r/relationships •Posted by u/TimaeusUnidentified 6 months ago   
UPDATE: I [23M] cannot understand my [24M?] roommate. He is the most bizarre man to ever set foot on earth and i’m afraid i’m losing him. 

Updates 

OK. So I guess I have to start this confession somewhere. I have methodically exhausted my quota of alternative social outlets, and it would be horrifying to burden any of my other friends with the dormant secondhand embarrassment nuke of frankly nuclear proportions I'm about to mercilessly unleash upon all of you. If it helps, take this as my absolute last resort. Such a case is highly probable, I'm nothing but thorough. It’s mortifying for me to type this, too.

My roommate and I met a year ago. Back then i was an exhausted twentysomething dropout fresh outta college, like the Muppet Babies version of a worn down 30-year-old salaryman that has been caught in a tsunami of illicit activities and debilitating debt that is so goddamn high his only way out of being hunted by the yakuza dogs is through a shady deal in which he’ll trade all his functioning organs to be reborn as an infant monstrosity of repurposed skin parts, building life back out from square one. 

But i didn’t have a drug issue, college just proved to be counterproductive where i was, and i had to reroute before giving it another go. Got lost in the thrill of the metaphor. Anyhow, I post this AD looking to split the cost of a modest flat with somebody, as one does, because I live alone and my closest relative has his own shitstorm of economic issues in the format of investing in obscure indie film productions that barely go anywhere, and after a dime a dozen incompatible candidates waltzes in The Guy.

For the sake of this post, let’s say, hypothetically, that his name was “Jacob.” He’s like 6’5, decked out in DisneyAvengers Iron Man© patterned khakis, got huge arms, equally blinding grin, talks like a radio host with an incorrigible accent from a bygone era, but he just so happens to be the right age (Our difference turned out to be mere months) and seems, by all accounts, to be pathetically harmless. This was an important prerequisite after a few teeth-grinding experiences I previously scored at the dorms; in the spirit of full disclosure, I'm trans, and you never know how arbitrarily matched up freaks will react to living in close quarters and being forced to breathe in your wretched pheromones. I figure the lowest tier vibes this guy gives off are that of a weed peddler, which I don't particularly mind if they’re clear headed enough, so he becomes my roommate.

He claims our couch right off the bat. He’s got his own room, but rarely ever uses it for anything besides changing and storing hefty piles of comic books and a few funny-looking taxidermied squirrels in victorian costumes, because he spends most of his time syphoning vital energy out of our living room TV and sifting through an array of perplexing C-list movie choices, most of which he has seen multiple times. (He says he’s “Eclectic” and “Takes it all in stride!” as a mind boggling means of justification.) Our routines match up nicely enough that it doesn’t bother me, he’s diurnal and proud of it while i tend to stay up most of the night doing freelance online work. We had very small windows for actually interacting since one of us would be asleep when the other was awake, and besides he’d keep his dishes clean and television at a modest volume. Jacob is the type to be eccentric enough to enjoy “jogs” around town every other morning, come back with some sidewalk trinket under his arm, and leave freshly brewed pots of daily coffee for my perusal (when i wake up in the afternoon) out of his own initiative. It was/is pretty thoughtful. Sorry for the messed up tenses, I'm uncertain as to how better classify my current state of uncertainty. The first months are more than chill, they’re great. So great, in fact, that we end up getting pretty fuckin’ chummy.

He’s a handsy, excitable guy when he wants to be, sort of like a massive dog. But sometimes it's as though his brain exists in another dimension. I mean, catch him by surprise and you run an equal risk of witnessing him squeak out “Sweet jumpin’ Jehosaphat what a friggin fright!” or “Shit you fucking scared me, bro.” like that tonal dissonance ain’t no biggie. But besides that, he often seems to operate on randomized patterns of whimsy. I’m still not sure of *what* in the name of fuck his job entails, task which isn’t made any easier by how he apparently keeps losing whatever it is month in and month out, but he’s never had problems keeping his side of rent on time. Old money? He never told me, so I can only wonder. In fact, my roommate abhors talking about his familial affairs. He’s very talented at changing the subject.I think they’re estranged in some way or another, but he’ll still frequently mention his grandma.

Just as a comparison point, he has no issue in talking to me about his atrocious media choices and related thinkpieces on the topic for *hours* on end, which he often swears comes in a curated flavor of tongue-in-cheek, sugar coated irony (which is something I appreciate, and he seems to have picked up on). Or nagging me to talk his ears off on anything I'm currently studying even if it’s incomprehensible to him. But when it comes to more personal info, things are far and inbetween. I feel like for the entire time we have been friends, he’s only ever entrusted me with one tidbit about himself, while i’ve been deftly coerced into offering a whole trilogy of spicy bible-length reports ranging from my embarrassing childhood to awkward blooming adolescence. And i don’t exactly feel… bad about it? Like i said, dude’s harmless, couldn’t hurt a fly if it pissed directly in his eye. And we’ve gotten close, which is the issue. I just wish I could see more clearly into his head.

Anyway, he's been recovering from a close brush up with alcoholism & thus we've established a rule of "no large quantities of potent alcoholic beverages in the house" for the sake of his peace of mind. I don't drink, so that was a no-brainer. We don’t keep any of that shit in here. The only temptation he could feasibly worry about is developing a warped affinity for lukewarm redbull and canned chicken soup.

I guess somewhere along the line our internal clocks signed an union treaty and decided to synchronize, at which point it got difficult to distinguish where *my* routine ended and where *his* began. He came up with a weekly bonding ritual of playing 'uber eats russian roulette' every friday and religiously sharing the meals in our decluttered dinner table (activity that has turned out to be either disastrous or surprisingly cool, depending on our luck and spice tolerance threshold), which also entails partaking in a shitty rate-off of the aforementioned dishes and then trying to see if we can come up with a decent dinner together. 

He does most grocery runs and never complains about me skipping duty or requesting itemized lists while he's out, even checks on me on the dire occasion I get too absorbed in my own stuff and wind up debugging shit til the crack of dawn. He even bought us an honest to god old lady cookbook out of an infomercial flash sale campaign one time he stubbornly stayed up to watch when i would finish my duties and if i’d go to bed as promised. His cooking is still mostly atrocious, but I forgive him for attempts on my life because he’s easy to talk to and being around him more made me feel better than I have in ages. That sort of guy. 

My roommate is very liberal about his emotions. Some would even say capricious, but i struggle to put it that way when it’s more on the softcore side. He cries easily (i have never MADE him cry, i’m just noting.) can get upset at the drop of a hat when he feels like he's messed up, disperses winks like it's nothing, and has gotten used to touching me on the reg. Nonsexually. I'm talking about strictly platonic hand holding, arm grabbing, hair ruffling, occasional hug sort of deal. I don’t usually reciprocate the gestures unless its compulsory, because i'm fully aware he’s into chicks (It’s impossible to miss, his room is decked out in shitty tittied up sci-fi leading lady posters, with a few inconspicuous creatures squeezed inbetween to provide a flimsy blanket of deniability. I swear, some of these could count as soft porn. Have you heard of Vampirella? Look it up.) I know this is just his way of asserting a cool bro-bond between us, but I'm afraid if I do it I won't be able to keep it “cool”. He _knows_ about me. That i like dudes, i mean, and how that implies *i* don’t really have a problem with _other dudes_ getting up and close, that it won’t offend me if he acts all organic. But i would totally mean it. It's pretty fucking concerning. I'm like a depraved sick schoolgirl and feel extremely guilty whenever he does shit like fall asleep tangled up on me on the couch or lay his head on my lap after I win an argument to convince him to watch one of _my_ top of the shelf movie masterpieces. It's a torture devised specifically to feed my demons, but i deeply value him as a friend before whatever this fixation might turn out to be.

I realized I had developed an unhealthy attachment to my straight roommate during one of the times he fell asleep on me. Again, the usual fanfare. And i have no idea if our arrangement can survive much more of that, specially after we had sex. Now, when i put it like that it sounds like utter bullshit after what i just told you, but what "happened" was that Jacob convinced me to try and help him make this special kush based brownie recipe one of his contacts shared in confidence. He was utterly pumped about the prospect of earning easy money by selling them to fellow chill chasing freeloaders, but we ended up messing up the measurements and I think the effect was higher than we were psychologically prepared for. Like I said, I didn't really have a comparison point for how much was 'enough', he's shit at math, and given the nature of the product it would be amateurish to ship it off without testing a batch. We were too caught up riffing off on the breaking bad lab scenes to question anything. Honest mistake, better safe than sorry, but once the _mary et joanne_ took effect it only subsided on the following afternoon. A full fucking day. Never touching it again. Since i talk a lot of shit when I'm sober and he's already cuddly with a clear head, i imagine (If i could clearly remember what happened we wouldn't even be here, trust me.) one dumb comment led to another and our mollified psyches probably softened the squick factor for him, the same way they subdued my inhibitions, and we blinked in and out of a confused, hormone based, and otherwise platonic parade of demonstrations of affection.

I know he's not ready or looking for a relationship right now, if ever, because the last one he's been in was basically straight out of hell. He hasn't offered a lot of information on that either, but from what i've pierced together his ex girlfriend *might've* poked holes on his condom when he was planning to break things off with her, and said event contributed to his whiskey-based total doom spiral. They were supposed to be starcrossed high school sweethearts, I guess, and she was already on the path to being pretty well off, so the way he refers to the whole episode are offhand comments about how he "ran off from the altar" one time. “Like a goddamned comedy script.” Whole thing sounds nightmarish, and I don't really expect more info, but I understand the underlying trust issues one might get after such affairs.

So I did the adult thing to do and decided to not acknowledge our brief foray into homoville as something he was bound to answer for (after recuperating my cognitive/judgemental abilities) & definitely could NOT afford to lay around assnaked on his bed while he dozed off. Fight club rules, whatever happens in the edible zone stays in the edible zone.

But of course, that made things weird. 

My plan seemed to be working up until the point he didn’t make an effort to talk to me at all. He was usually the one to break the ice, so I got stuck at an impasse. It might’ve been better if i never mentioned it, but i eventually got cold feet and made an offhand joke about him being a certain hit on Tinder over text while he was out.(He started spending more time out after the fact, his jogs can stretch up to five hours’ worth of loitering and when he gets home he says he already had dinner so it’s “probably better if i eat up while he’s away”) He used to respond to my messages straight away, but lately i get the sense he’s really avoiding me. His texts are smaller and they take 1~2 hours to come through. He stopped sleeping in our living room and started keeping the door to his bedroom locked when he’s inside, which he never did before, to my knowledge. (I know this because i used to be able to just walk in when i wanted to hang out, nothing creepy. As i said, pretty comfy shit between two perfectly normal dudes.) I miss the way things used to be.

In the past few weeks he’s gone as far as to spend a few nights out with no prior notice, and I don’t think I’m allowed to ask where he’s going. I can sniff it in his breath. I got paranoid about a possible relapse so i sort of, uh, freaked out? I checked his room for any incriminating evidence since it’d be MUCH easier to breach the topic if i could bring up our agreed upon house rules instead of getting on his ass like i’m the mommy, but he hasn’t brought any of it home. I eventually cracked his laptop history wide open (I know. I’m sorry. Bad habit.) and thanks to the fact he keeps his google account synced between devices, i found a litany of mistyped google searches ranging between ‘how do you know youre not straight’ and ‘sleep w/ trans makesme genderws????’ as well as multiple favorited pages on Roomies and Roomster located around town or a few kms away. I think it’s pretty goddamn obvious i broke something on his end and he’s reached the grossout stage where he’s trying to make sure i didn’t give him gay cooties, and there isn’t a lot i can do to take that back.

Just yesterday he came home visibly hungover and i tried to weasel my way into a real conversation (i got as far as saying ‘hey, dude’) but he stopped me short, wiggled into his cave, and just half-mumbled something like “Dont call me dude” before he shut me out. And that’s where we’re at in our precarious arrangement. It’s clear we’re well on our way to drifting apart, and i’m really afraid of losing him over a stupid mistake, but i don’t think i can stop it without making things more uncomfortable. I’ve considered the inevitability of him finding something better from the start, but I thought I'd be fine if we could at least stay friends. The way things are going it’s far more likely we’ll drift off like two passing ships in the night and he’ll delete my contact as soon as i’m out of earshot.

TL;DR: Roommate and I grew to be close friends in record time, we accidentally hooked up but I'm pretty sure he doesn’t swing that way, I think I might’ve broken an unspoken rule about his past trauma that made bad memories resurface and now he’s moving out. How am I supposed to salvage this?

I'm not holding out a lot of hope and i won’t fault you for making fun of my ass in the comments, like ‘damn, bro, you’re fucked’ because yeah, i think so too. Criticisms are accepted, tips and suggestions heavily encouraged, but if you plan on dunking please aim for the head. Eviscerate me creatively.

*EDIT 1: Fuck. i’m an idiot. I didn’t realize how insensitive most of this sounded at the spur of the moment.

**EDIT 2: Thanks everyone. I’m going to try “talking” to him about my “feelings” and see if that clears up some of the pent-up unease we’re fostering right now. Worst thing that could happen is I get dumped sooner than later. I don’t entirely agree with the theory that he might’ve been interested in me beforehand, like i said all the stuff he does is very casual. The summary presented on this post gives off the wrong impression. But yeah, wish me luck.

***EDIT 3: I change my mind. I hate all of you. Here’s the kicker: he showed me this post this morning. 

In hindsight, I should have guessed it would be reposted far and wide, but I didn’t realize just how far it could spread when people’s favorite characters are attached in the image caption and kotaku decides to make a fandom article on it. I also severely misjudged how “Online” he is. Those were easily the most draining and embarrassing 45 fucking minutes of my entire sorry life. Apparently, i’m either far stupider than i thought or far hotter than i previously assumed, because he said “He felt like he was going stir crazy and i just wasn’t all that into him” and that “He was pretty friggin sure he had been jonesing a crush on me since last february.” And, well, I think we’re dating now. He’s reading me type this out over my shoulder and criticizing my syntax of his accent and his breath smells of the nasty Mcdees double-onion burger, by the way, but it’s fine because I’m glad he stopped crying and has switched to just affixing himself onto my back like a deathtrap. (The crying isn’t a problem, I'm just saying it’s cool you feel ok now. It’s dope.) Say hi jake. I love you.

69% Upvoted

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. Thanks so much for the love on this silly r/relationships post, im pleasantly surprised to find there's still enough affection for these two to go around. If you think Dirk's testimony sounds a little skewed, though, the second part on this series goes back in time to show things in a more neutral light (if not outright jake-illuminating, in regards to his issues) Also, they do make out in that one.


End file.
